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In the headlines...
🐊 A federal judge ordered that no more immigrant detainees be sent to “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida, construction to stop, and much of the facility be dismantled, saying the state and federal government failed to consider environmental harms before building it.
Once “at risk of extinction” from HIV, Botswana is now a world leader in eliminating the virus in children
In the 2000s, HIV was rampant in Botswana, with one in eight infants reported to be infected at birth, and rates of mother-to-child transmission between 20 and 40%. Mortality among children under five nearly doubled between 1990 and 200 because of the virus.
Now, Botswana has one of the world’s most successful HIV-elimination programs, with interventions that slashed the mother-to-child transmission rate to under 1% over the course of just two decades. Fewer than 100 HIV-positive infants are born annually, an event so rare that each case is evaluated to determine how it happened.
The remarkable turnaround was thanks to political will, investment in scientific infrastructure, and sustained public health education that brought the latest, most effective tools to those at highest risk.
Even better:Initially, even the World Health Organization was skeptical the country was seeing such low infection numbers. Then, earlier this year, Botswana became the first country in the world with a high HIV burnden to achieve WHO Gold Tier status for eliminating mother-to-child HIV transmission as a public health threat.
The amount of oil spilled from tankers has declined dramatically — especially recently
Despite global oil production and trade increasing dramatically, the amount of oil spilled from tankers has declined since the 1970s, most dramatically since the turn of the century.
In the 1970s, over 300,000 tonnes of oil were spilled from tankers pretty much annually. That dropped to over 100,000 tonnes by the 1980s and 1990s. In 2024, there were 10,000 tonnes spilled, less than one-thirtieth of the amount spilled in the 1970s.
While that’s still far too much and still leads to extensive environmental damage and expensive clean-up efforts, there is far less damage being done today — and that’s something to celebrate.
Botswana is beautiful proof that there’s no such thing as a lost cause when it comes to global health — when we commit to making things better, we can do it.
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